Our Lady of Westminster
The image is an English alabaster, flat backed, 36 inches (91 cm) high, and depicts the Virgin Mary enthroned with the Christ child on her right knee.
Most experts in the field agree that the image was carved in the Nottingham area in about 1450 from alabaster mined at nearby Chellaston, but the intervening 500 years until 1954, when the statue was found and bought in Paris by the dealer S. W. Wolsey, are a blank.
Throughout the period of their production, Nottingham alabaster images were hugely popular in Europe and were exported in large quantities, some ending up as far afield as Iceland, Croatia and Poland.
The discovery in 1863 of a headless but stylistically almost identical alabaster image, buried in the churchyard of All Saints' Broughton-in Craven suggests that, as was apparently usually the case, the statue was a standard model repeated several times by the workshop and probably produced for stock rather than upon receipt of a particular commission.
The ground beneath Mary's feet was a characteristic dark green scattered with red and white daisies and her crown, sceptre, mantle fastenings and the Christ child's hair were all gilded.
[1] These bright colours were characteristic of Nottingham Alabaster since they, for the most part, were designed to be housed in wooden altarpieces with painted shutters and to be seen by candlelight in dimly lit churches.
Jean Froissart gives a vivid description of the manner in which the young King Richard II of England, during the 1381 Peasants' Revolt, prepared to meet the rebels, led by Wat Tyler, at Smithfield: "Richard II on the Saturday after Corpus Christi went to Westminster, where he heard Mass at the Abbey with all his Lords.
Furthermore, at the special desire of the king, this mandate was issued at Lambeth on 10 February 1399 and reads as follows: "The contemplation of the great mystery of the Incarnation has brought all Christian nations to venerate her from whom came the beginnings of redemption.
But we, as the humble servants of her inheritance, and liegemen of her especial dower - as we are approved by common parlance ought to excel all others in the favour of our praises and devotions to her.
Catholic Trivia, Our Forgotten Heritage, HarperCollins, 1992 Shrines of Our Lady in England, Anne Vail, Gracewing Publishing, 2004 English Medieval Alabasters (with a catalogue of the collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum), Francis Cheetham, Second Edition, The Boydell Press, 2005.
